Considering Line6 or other digital mixer

[LenImbery]

Our group currently use a bose L1 II with 2 B1s and tonematch plus a small aux mixer.  5 mics, 3 instruments through the PA but would need extra channels for bass guitar and mic'd drums.  We've been playing around with videos and I've concluded to get the proper sound we'd like, we can't go with just a zoom mic etc. We need a multi channel mix that we can edit in a DAW afterwards to drop into the video. So, what I'd probably really like doesn't exist...a 12+ channel tonematch! I've been looking at digital mixers that can record multitracks as well and was considering a Behringer XR-18....very powerful but very complicated as I'd have to learn a lot about buses and signal routing etc. The other mixer I was looking at is a Line6 M20D which seems to be geared towards someone less technical but it too is very powerful with what looks like a high learning curve. If I bought one or the other of these, I'd just use it instead of the tonematch and have lots more channels. Any recommendations?

[eklynx]

I have owned an M20D since it pretty much came out and it has done a fantastic job.  The sound is clear, it's easy to use, but has enough advanced options if needed to really tweak the sound well.  The SD card recording has been great

 

That being said, there have been no updates or talk of updates to this mixer since Yamaha bought out Line6.  I've also outgrown it (I needed more inputs and aux outs).   As the digital mixer space has grown in the last handful of years I've switched over to the Yamaha TF series. I've been using the TF3 now for almost a year and have the Rack version pre-ordered for smaller setups, but with the stage boxes to be able to expand the connection capabilities.  Downside is multi-track recording now has to happen on my laptop through the Dante card (i think the USB connections will only record stereo to a direct drive.  USB to Host computer is multi-track audio though i think).

 

As for the other companies: Soundcraft makes some good boards as well, but again, no SD Card recording to my knowledge, and don't know about any multitrack capabilities.  I cant's stand Behringer high ends (too harsh with more digital artifacts), and the reverb on the Mackie boards drive me nuts.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[LenImbery]

I've bought the M20D, and have played with it at home and tried it at one rehearsal where we recorded a few tunes.  I'm really liking it so far aside from the first time using it, I somehow lost one of my preset inputs (darn that auto-assign)  but now I've got it figured out for the most part.